Every year, CNS provides an all expense travel grant to send students to the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Recipients are chosen based upon their participation in CNS and on the quality of a submitted essay outlining why they wish to go.

This year, CNS was able to award three travel grants to CSE PhD students Xinxin Jin, Karyn Benson, and Natalie Larson.

The Grace Hopper conference is a premier networking and career enhancement conference for women in computing, but few students have an opportunity to attend since they usually have to pay from their own funds. Nonetheless, students are aware of its value. Xinxin Jin talked in her essay about how exposing herself to successful women in computing will help her to build confidence in her career. Karyn Benson spoke about how instrumental mentoring by a female computer scientist has been in her career and how she hopes to become a mentor to other women in turn. Finally, Natalie Larson wrote that “the conference has great potential to affect growth for me… I am in the early stages of my PhD– my second year …and while I have done many academic internships, I have never worked in an industry internship and have little experience interacting with industry leaders. Participating in the conference this year would mean a lot for me.”